300 translators will talk business and practice in Vienna in AprilBP18 Translation Conference will take place on 19-20 April with translators from some 40 countries

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Greater than 2 minutes, my friend!

Whenever I talk about what I do to outsiders, most of the time they don’t have a clue. “What? Translators need training? Continuous education? And what can translators possibly learn about?”

Well, one thing that translators don’t learn about at translation conferences is translation itself. It’s a given. It’s assumed that you, as a professional translator, know the tricks of the trade inside out: the meanings, the terms, the sentence structures, the conversions, the intended messages. And of course you’re knowledgeable of your subject area, whether it’s aerospace, business buzzwords, or cosmetics.

What many translators don’t know properly is how to sell their services; how to position themselves on the market; how to get the price they deserve; how to upgrade their skills on that new software everyone is talking about; how to stay ahead of the curve, when the discourse about machine translation (MT) has now gone mainstream; how to gain more recognition for what we do.

Business + Practice

Let’s face it: translators are the hidden foot soldiers of modern commerce. Millions of business documents, product manuals, software interfaces, movie subtitles, legal proceedings, academic research papers are being translated every day to keep the global economy spinning around. While some of these are being translated into another language using MT, you’ll need genuine flesh-and-blood (and -brain) translators for the most mission-critical documents.

That’s the raison d’être of BP Translation Conferences: offering continuous professional development in Business and Practice for translators. And we’ve been doing that successfully for a few years now. In fact, BP18 will be our fifth annual conference, and it will also be our biggest event so far, with over 300 translators attending from around the globe.

BP18 is unique among translation conferences by offering a one-of-a-kind conference experience. The first day will be held in a cinema, with 12 short, TED-like talks, while the second day will follow a more traditional format of longer sessions in 3 parallel tracks. Three networking dinners and other fringe events help build even stronger ties between conference attendees.

Our 30 speakers come from 18 countries, and will talk about such diverse subjects as the professionalisation of our profession, dealing with source language interference, legal aspects of technical translations, the impact of artificial intelligence on our profession, creative writing, quality assurance, dealing with difficult clients, cloud-based solutions for translators, and many, many more.

Badass Polyglots

250 people registered already from Montréal to Moscow, from Cardiff to Kuwait and beyond. The top five countries represented are Germany, Austria, the UK, Italy, and the US. While a handful of attendees are just starting out (we do have a special discount for students), most people are established translators with 5-10-20 years of experience who can afford the conference fee and the associated costs (travel, accommodation, etc.).

With five a half weeks to go, we’re expecting a final rush of registrations soon (in fact, a colleague just registered from New York while I was writing this article, and three more contacted me by email). If you’re considering attending, don’t wait for too long, as current prices are valid only until the end of March.

Babel Power

Whatever you’re into, you’ll get it in Vienna. Foodies can enjoy a slice of genuine Sacher cake, but only after a generous portion of Wienerschnitzel. History buffs will be happy in the Hofburg palace. Culture vultures can feast on sumptuous art collections that include Bruegel’s iconic painting, the Tower of Babel — the mythological edifice that gave rise to our profession.

The next time someone asks what I do, I may tell them I help translators achieve their business goals by breaking their daily routines and bringing them together at invigorating events.